Table of Contents

Frontmatter
List of Illustrations
1: Introduction
Between Athens and Jerusalem
Weaving together histories and traditions
Israeli theatre and its audiences
A survey of scholarship
Scope of the study
Book structure
2: Habima: Outsidedness as a catalyst of creativity
First encounters with the Greek Classical repertoire
In lieu of summary: The Nissim Aloni effect
3: The Cameri: In search of local theatrical identity
A Modern Hebrew theatre in Tel Aviv
Summary
4: Experimentations: Putting the aesthetics of performance into practice
Aryeh Sachs: Experimenting with ritual theatre
Yossi Yizraely: Experimentations with stage imagery
Edna Shavit: Experiments with Classicism
Summary
5: Aristophanes and the Occupied Territories
Text and socio-political context
Hanoch Levin: Contention, defiance, and protest
Summary
6: The Trojan War and Israeli-Palestinian conflict
Theatrical responses to the Six Day War (1967)
Theatrical responses to the Lebanon War (1981)
Summary
7: Lysistrata: Between entertainment and protest
Lysistrata on the Israeli stages
Summary
8: Nissim Aloni: Oedipus Tyrannus in an immigrant society
The myth of King Oedipus: Migrant and autochthon
Summary
9: Hanoch Levin: From ancient myths to modern tragedy
Israel in the aftermath of the Six Day War (1967)
Levin's dialogue with Euripides
Levin's dialogue with Aeschylus: The Moaners (1999)
Summary
10: Classical presences and 'post dramatic' performances
Ruth Kanner: Processing communal grief
Troy revisited in the third millennium
Ilan Ronen: Theatre as a memory machine
Rina Yerushalmi: Lessons of the past
Hanan Snir: From politics to psychodrama
Summary
11: The Classical tradition in university theatre
First encounters: Sophocles' Antigone (1969)
From theory to practice: Yizraely reads Aristotle
Research and practice: Greek tragedy
In lieu of summary: The General and the Sea (2015)
12: Israeli theatre: A snapshot of today and future prospects
Appendix: Performances of Greek and Roman drama in Israel
Endmatter
Bibliography
Index

About the Author

Nurit Yaari is Professor of Theatre Studies in the Department of Theatre Arts within the David and Yolanda Katz Faculty of the Arts at Tel Aviv University. She previously held a Visiting Professorship at INALCO (Institut National des Langues et Civilisations Orientales) in Paris. She has published widely in Hebrew, English, and French on contemporary French theatre, Israeli theatre, and on the reception of Greek tragedy in Israeli theatre and modern dance,
including the monograph Le théâtre de Hanokh Levin: Ensemble à l'ombre des canons (Editions Théâtrales, 2008), and the edited collection Inter-Art Journey: Exploring the Common Grounds of the Arts. Studies in
Honor of Eli Rozik (Sussex Academic, 2015). Professor Yaari is also currently serving as an artistic consultant for the Khan Theatre of Jerusalem.

Reviews

Yaari's book opens a window to Israeli theater for nonspecialists in this field, without any need for prior familiarity with the Hebrew language. It is also a valuable contribution to the widening field of classical reception, showing how this discipline can be a catalyst for invigorating examinations of the politics of cultural and religious identities ... Yaari's research is an invitation to further study how modern Israeli culture identifies itself both within and in contrast to the Mediterranean space, broadly construed, with its European and Arab components coexisting in close proximity.
*Abigail Akavia, Classical Philology*

Yaari's monograph is not simply a significant addition for the field of Classical Reception, it is also a remarkable study in its effort to resolve the old tensions between 'Athens' and 'Jerusalem', those two ideological forces of influence in the Jewish national renaissance of modern times ... Yaari's book is a rich and well-written study, which presents Greek drama as a standing cultural apparatus for a post-Brechtian, post-humanist, and post-dramatic era, demonstrating that Israeli theatre treated 'Athens' as the cultural product of the Eros for democracy and transformation.
*George Sampatakakis, New Theatre Quarterly*

This well written and well researched work is highly recommended for classists, for historians and sociologists of Israel, and for those interested in the classical tradition and its reception, cross-cultural dialogue, Greek drama in general, and Israeli theater in particular. Yaari has made a truly worthwhile contribution to the field, opening many new trails that warrant further exploration.
*David B. Levy, Classical World*

Nurit Yaari's study of the 'clasical tradition' on Israeli stages, appropriately pulished in the Classical Presences series at Oxford University Press, is an exemplary study of a complex and multifaceted cultural encounter between the past and the present: the integration of the classical Greek and Roman legacies into the gradually emerging Israeli theatre culture.
*Freddie Rokem, Theatre Research International*